


the mess you've made (a better person than i)

by jesse (accio_belle)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aubrey Little Gets a Dog, Aubrey Little Has Emotions, Dani is a Supportive Girlfriend, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Grieving Aubrey Little, Ned "Bravery" Chicane, Ned Chicane is a Zombie at One Point, there is so much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23382640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accio_belle/pseuds/jesse
Summary: Ned is cremated, his ashes buried behind the Amnesty Lodge, beneath a large pine tree. Barclay nails a plaque to it, made from a piece of wood from the door to the Cryptonomica.Ned “Bravery” Chicane.With love.(aubrey has a very hard time getting over what she said to ned the last time they were together.)
Relationships: Aubrey Little & Her Emotions, Dani/Aubrey Little, Edmund "Ned" Chicane & Aubrey Little, Minor or Background Relationship(s), but relationships are there, i guess they're minor relationships???, it's focused around aubrey and her emotions
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	the mess you've made (a better person than i)

**Author's Note:**

> hot damn ANOTHER fic?? quarantine rlly has me on a roll doesn't it
> 
> tagged as "major character death" but ned is already dead, aubrey has a dream where other characters die but that is only in a dream, nobody actually dies i promise
> 
> this was a bitch to tag cause it's mostly aubrey-centric and about her dealing with her emotions (fun stuff eh) but like. Relationships Are There They Just Aren't The Focus
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Aubrey never, ever forgets her last conversation with Ned.

_“You knew, Ned, and you didn’t tell me. You lied every time you looked at me and didn’t say it. You_ **lied** _, Ned!”_

_“I’m going to tell Mama that I found her laptop here in_ **your** _shop, and that you have been lying to all of us. And I better not see your face again.”_

_“Before you run, and hide, and lie, and whatever it is you do, you might try to clean up a little bit of the mess you’ve made.”_

The words weigh heavy and sour on Aubrey’s tongue, even months later. They haunt her. At night they settle on her chest and press her into the mattress of her bed. She finds it hard to sleep.

Aubrey _wishes_ with all her might she could take them back.

\---

Aubrey has a dream about it, once.

She is kneeling beside Ned ~~’s body~~. Her mind refuses to connect the dots, refuses to believe he’s actually dead. Desperate, reeling from shock, she lays her hands over his chest. His blood is cold and sticks to her palms.

The magic didn’t really work. She knows that. But in the dream, Ned’s eyes open wide.

They remind her of marbles. Round. Glassy. Dark, sticky blood drools from the corner of his mouth. His unseeing eyes roll terribly in their sockets before coming to rest on her face. His lips part and more blood stains his beard.

_Your fault, Aubrey,_ he says. His breath smells like mouldy leaves. Aubrey gags and scrambles backwards as Ned’s corpse sits up, his eyes remaining locked with hers.

He pushes himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily. The bloodstain on the front of his clothes grows darker. His head lolls on his neck as he shuffles towards her.

_Aaauuuubbbrrreeeeyyyyy_ , he says.

Aubrey watches in petrified horror his body start to decay before her eyes. Skin turns grey and flakes off; an eye falls from its socket and bumps against his cheek; hair sheds with pieces of skin until his scalp is showing; fingers curl and turn stiff with rigor mortis. Maggots burst out of his neck and wriggle wildly, dropping to the forest floor. Ned’s corpse grins, the corners of his mouth rising far higher than they should, lips peeling back to reveal yellowed teeth.

Aubrey wants to scream, but her voice is stuck in her throat.

_You know what you did, Aaaauuubbbrrreeeeyyyy._

The wind picks up. Behind Ned, the peak of Mount Kepler begins to rise. It explodes with a thundering crack as the moon turns blood-red and the sky darkens.

A scream splits the air, clear over the howling wind. Barclay bursts into the clearing. His clothes are engulfed with flame. He writhes in panic, screaming at the top of his lungs, before falling to his knees. He reaches out a hand towards Aubrey, then collapses completely. More residents of Kepler and the Lodge appear, all of them wrapped in blankets of fire. Dani, Mama, Jake, Thacker, Indrid, Minerva, Duck, Pigeon, even Hollis and the Hornets. They’re all flailing and shrieking at the top of their lungs, some begging for mercy, others cursing her name. The smell of burnt flesh and hair is nauseating. Aubrey doubles over and gags again, covering her mouth and nose with her hand.

Ned’s corpse shuffles ever forward, grinning wildly, remaining eye trained on Aubrey. The flesh on his face has been completely stripped away in some spots, revealing bone. His clothes hang loose on his frame; he nearly trips twice over the bottom of his pants. Without warning, he lunges towards her, half-rotted hand latching onto her wrist. Audrey wails, high and panicked, trying to tear herself from his grasp.

_You killed me, Aaaaauuuubbbrreeeeyyyy,_ Ned hisses. 

Her heel catches a tree root and she falls backwards, Ned’s corpse toppling on top of her. His face is almost entirely skull now, red lights glowing from deep inside his sockets. He laughs darkly, his grip tightening around her wrists.

Ned’s teeth elongate into fangs. Aubrey screams and screams and screams as he rears back and tears out her throat.

\---

Aubrey shoots upwards in bed, shrieking, her hands clawing at her throat. Her palms are hot, sweaty. She hears Dani asking what’s wrong, feels her girlfriend’s hands on the sides of her face. Her vision is blurred; Aubrey realizes suddenly that tears are building in her eyes and sticking to her lashes.

For half a second, the air is filled with the sickening cocktail of charred flesh, gunshot smoke, and blood. Her stomach heaves. Aubrey leaps out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom. She spends the rest of the night alternating between throwing up and dozing lightly against the side of the bathtub.

\---

She almost doesn’t go to the burial.

Dani convinces her, though. Says it’s important to honour a fallen friend. Aubrey almost laughs when Dani says that, like the last time she spoke to Ned wasn’t full of venom.

They wear black and walk hand-in-hand through the portal. Some people stop and offer their condolences to Aubrey. Pigeon, understandably, avoids her as best as she can. Aubrey smiles stiffly, shaking hands and pretending like her insides aren’t tearing each other in half.

The ceremony starts. Duck and Mama each say a few words to the small crowd of Lodge residents. Aubrey lingers near the back. Dani’s hand is warm and familiar in hers, keeping her grounded. She feels antsy, like there are a pair of eyes on her no matter where she moves.

Ned is cremated, his ashes buried behind the Amnesty Lodge, beneath a large pine tree. Barclay nails a plaque to it, made from a piece of wood from the door to the Cryptonomica.

_Ned “Bravery” Chicane._

_With love._

\---

Sometimes, she thinks she can almost sense him.

She’ll see a tall shadow out of the corner of her eye and her brain will say _Ned?_ Dani will crack a terrible joke and Aubrey will think she hears Ned’s bellowing laughter echoed beneath her own. She’ll be exploring some dusty building and her mind will wander to the Cryptonomica’s back room, the smell of old artifacts and stale pizza in her nose.

Once, while Dani is out cataloguing plants or something, Aubrey has a sort-of breakdown on her bathroom floor. She cries until a headache begins to throb behind her eyes. Gripped tight in her hand is Ned’s final letter.

Aubrey doesn’t know how she feels. She’s still righteously furious he lied about everything from her past, of course, she doesn’t think she’ll get over that anytime soon. But dammit, she _misses_ him. She misses his laughter, his gentle ribbing, his apparent selflessness when the shifter arrived. A part of her wishes she had been there to see him save the lives of her friends.

She gnaws on her lower lip and rereads the end of the letter, eyes burning with more unshed tears. The bottom of the page is dotted with two small ripples; Ned must have shed a couple tears of his own when writing. Either that, or it’s drool. The thought makes the tiniest smile cross her lips.

All of a sudden, Aubrey feels very, very tired. She pushes herself up from the linoleum tiles and trudges over to her bed. She flops onto her belly and curls up with a pillow in her arms, the letter resting by her head. She closes her eyes.

As she drifts into an exhausted slumber, Aubrey feels the lightest of weights on her shoulder. She smells dust, and cheap beer, and cologne.

\---

She tells Dani about the conversation eventually.

It happens completely by accident. She and Dani are drinking and Aubrey has one too many Long Island iced teas and it all comes spilling out.

Aubrey’s pacing as she talks (nervous habit doubled when drunk). Dani watches her girlfriend confess, obvious concern wrinkling her brow. She watches Aubrey get more and more worked up until she stands and takes Aubrey’s wildly gesticulating hands in her own.

“You didn’t know, lovebug,” is all Aubrey hears before she starts crying too loud to hear anything else. She feels Dani’s arms around her and Dani’s lips on her forehead and Dani’s perfume in her nose and _Dani’s not mad that she basically sent Ned to his death._

Aubrey feels the tiniest bit of the weight on her chest dissolve.

\---

A week later, Dani takes a trip Kepler-side and doesn’t tell Aubrey what she's doing.

She comes back with a big Golden Retriever.

“He’s trained to respond to panic attacks and nightmares,” she says, handing Aubrey a stack of adoption papers and licenses. “I didn’t think Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD would be able to get certified as a therapy rabbit, but we can try if you’d rather have him than a dog.”

Aubrey takes one look at him and immediately names him Kelly.

(They get Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD certified anyway. Just in case. It makes him feel important.)

\---

One day, many years later, Aubrey visits Ned alone.

She lowers herself next to the dirt pile, back propped against the tree trunk. It’s quiet for a really long time. Then a tidal wave of words comes spilling forth from her lips. Anything she thinks Ned would like to hear about.

“Duck found a bottle of your cologne when he was helping clean the Cryptonomica last week. He wears way too much.”

“Minerva learned how to goof. Her favorite ones right now are dad jokes, which is apparently Duck’s personal hellscape.”

“Dani got me a dog. His name is Kelly. He likes walks and playing fetch and sleeping on me with his butt in my face.”

“Hollis made Hornets jackets for Kelly and Dr. Harris Bonkers, PhD. I’m pretty sure they like them.”

“Turns out I’m the embodiment of Sylvain, I guess? I can make pudding trees and cheese bushes. It’s pretty rad, honestly.”

“There was a rerun of _Saturday Night Dead_ the other day.”

“Jake’s been teaching Pigeon how to ride a skateboard. She’s not very good, but Jake says she’ll get way better.”

“The City of Chicane is growing well. Lots of people call it home now.”

“I think I might miss you, Ned.”

\---

The letter is framed above her bed.

\---

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on twitter ( [@acciobelle](https://twitter.com/accio_belle) ) if you wanna follow a professional shitposter


End file.
